Free Mobile in France. 3GB / month (after that it's throttled) and they don't give a shit if I tether. This costs 18 euro a month which is discounted from 20 because DSL isp is also Free. I'm outside of a major city so I only get about 15-20 MBit down and a tenth of that up. The actual box (Freebox Revolution) i'm using is capable of fiber to the house, however, and this exists in cities like Paris. Free is nice. They assign you a static IPv4 address and don't care how you use your bandwith. The Free

Wow, for once the US is better than Europe in mobile, my wife is on Virgin Mobile USA (a Sprint MVNO) and their throttle doesn't kick in until 2.5GB and it's only $25/month for 300 minutes/"unlimited" data/unlimited sms. If they didn't want to raise our rates by $10/month when she gets a new phone I'd be sticking with them.

Wow, for once the US is better than Europe in mobile, my wife is on Virgin Mobile USA (a Sprint MVNO) and their throttle doesn't kick in until 2.5GB and it's only $25/month for 300 minutes/"unlimited" data/unlimited sms. If they didn't want to raise our rates by $10/month when she gets a new phone I'd be sticking with them.

Well, it sounds like you're almost level. My phone costs me less than euro20/month for 21Mbps with no limit, and a couple of hundred calls/SMS. And here, unlimited means really unlimited, not some weird species of "unlimited" which has a 2.5GB cap.

FWIW, our home connection is symmetric 100/100Mbps on fiber, also unlimited (no capacity limits, no blocked ports, we can and do run a web server and a mail server, etc.). It's pricey, as it costs us euro45/month, but then we're in the countryside. A similar se

I am using German Telekom for my mobile ISP. They cap after 300MB. Way, way too low. After that it's 64kbit/s!

My DSL ISP is ok. No caps, but the uplink is tiny. I've got 6 MBit downlink, but only 512kbit uplink. Terrible for uploading photos or other stuff.

That's interesting, since T-Mobile US, which is now partially spun off from DT, offers an unlimited data plan prepaid or postpaid at $70/month (truly unlimited for the phone itself, 500 MB tethering per month), as well as less-expensive options of 2.5 GB ($60) and 500 MB ($50), all with unlimited talk and text. There's also a prepaid $30 plan with 5 GB data/100 minutes talk (not sure about SMS), but that's only for new activations; you can't switch to it from another plan. On the plans with limits, it's at

Believe me, your wireless companies would like to retire the old protocols as fast as they can scrape up the capital budget, at least in the cities and medium-large suburbs, though less so out in the boonies.

The issue isn't just selling you an iPhone N+1 to replace your iPhone N-2 or have your tablet hit your monthly bandwidth cap in 2 days instead of 5, it's mostly that the newer protocols use their radio bandwidth a lot more efficiently, so if they can migrate the 2G and 2.5G users over to LTE or at least

8 Mbps down is 1 MB/sec, so 86.4GB/day, so you could hit a 250 GB monthly data cap by about Wednesday the first week. (I'm running 3 Mbps DSL, but since Comcast keeps talking about data caps, and won't let you run servers at home, I've got no respect for their claims to be 10x faster...) Of course, if they're blocking The Pirate Bay, that cuts way back on their total bandwidth needs:-)

Until recently, when we started doing some new cloud projects that have their own connectivity, I had two different ISP-equivalents at work. One was the Corporate IT department network, which connects to my desktop, the corporate email, internal web servers, and firewalled access to the public internet, doesn't have any bandwidth limits other than the 100 Mbps wire to my desk, but has a lot of access filtering to cut out NSFW material, including Dangerous Evil Hacker Sites (I do computer security research

vnstat -m reports 74.04Gib on my home Linux server for this month only. I have had months with a lot more traffic than that.

I dunno if it's a US-only thing, because the only place I've actually paid an ongoing monthly ISP bill is the US. I guess you're saying you're not capped, right? I'm not either, as far as I know, but my data speed is effectively a cap. I can't even achieve the advertised download rates, especially evenings and weekends when the neighbors are all online. Capping me would be pointless. If I can't get the 15Mb/sec they advertise, why bother, right?

Have you tried downloading big files between midnight and 6 AM local time to narrow down where the congestion might be? Some satellite ISPs even turn the meter off during those hours to encourage customers to shift their big downloads to the wee hours when their bandwidth is underused.

Bell makes sure that I will never reach their 30gb cap by having so much down time that it's just not possible. Between that and the 1/2km of untwisted, unshielded, 60 year old phone lines between my house and their nearest switch I never have to worry about going over my cap.

They run over the same lines, and actually just rent out space in Bell's building . So if the slow speeds really are due to bad line conditions, TekSavvy can't really do anything about it. Same goes for their cable offerings. I knew a guy who had no internet for 2 weeks because when something goes wrong, they have to get Rogers to fix the problem anyway. And Rogers doesn't put you on high priority. Also, they don't do the expensive fix, they mess around with you getting you to reset your modem and comput

It doesn't matter if you are will teksavvy bell or rogers, they will never do the expensive fix. Bell and rogers have the GTA by the balls and they will squeeze every penny they can in maintaining their monopoly of crap. Every time I lose service bell's first answer is to check all my physical connections and re-set the modem/router. I haven't touched the hardware on my end for years, the problems start at the service pole and end at the bloody CEO.

Back in the 1980s, I had two phone lines at home, one for talking, one for a modem for work. The modem line started having trouble, and wouldn't sync up at 2400 baud any more, just 1200, and the telco had trouble with my explanation about the problem ("What's it sound like?" "It sounds like }}}iii}}i}}}") so they told me it wasn't a data-rated business line anyway and blew me off. Eventually it reached the point that it sounded like "KKXKKTHKKHKKSSHHHKKXKK" on voice calls, so they came out and fixed the d

For a few years I tended to use "linksys" as my mobile data ISP, and from my apartment I can usually see 5-10 other wifi nodes, so if my DSL was down or my wifi router was hosed, I could borrow from a neighbor, and vice versa. But when 802.11g came out, and especially by the time 802.11n came out, most of the wifi modems started strongly encouraging users to set up authentication; I don't think I can connect to any of my neighbors' networks any more. (And I eventually had to get 802.11n because the signal

I was on unlimited but for a free speed upgrade we got a cap as part of the 'deal'. It was cheaper than the slow 512k thing and i kept our ip config. I have usage records and very rarely do we go over what the cap was adjusted down to.

Saved money, i can increase the limit but paying for wasted stuff appears pointless.

I would recommend my isp, they are local, i don't have issues with them, and i have a choice of other isp's.

It is perfectly possible to have a reasonable cap. If you find that you use a reasonable amount of your bandwidth cap, but still have a good bit left over, that is just about right. It isn't more than you could ever use, but it is more than you do use under normal usage, with some space for unexpected overages.

That was my vote. I pay for a 50GB cap, which is the plan I selected because it is about right. I think i've hit the 50GB once in the school holidays when all 4 kids were downloading stuff, but that was within a few days of the end of the billing period anyway so I didn't worry about it.

The only time I would vote for "too low" is if I needed more bandwidth but the higher cap was more expensive than I could afford, but if that was the case I'd go for an ISP that can give me Unlimited* Bandwidth at a low low

Since when does traffic from Netflix, Amazon, or foreign counterparts not count toward the monthly total? Or are you referring to subscribing to cable TV in addition to Internet and then using video on demand through your cable box? And since when does traffic from the PlayStation Store not count toward the monthly total? Perhaps I've never heard of your ISP or its policies, or perhaps you live in the southern hemisphere (NZAU) and the ISP meters only international traffic. Please explain further.

Some ISPs have made deals with major services like Netflix where traffic to their servers is not counted against quota, in exchange for the service paying a shedload of cash.

These types of deals are one reason for the concern over net neutrality, as they give a big advantage to established players with the benefits of good business relations, effectively making it impossible for newcomers to compete fairly.

This is a poorly phrased question, given that 'bandwidth' in a networking context usually refers to speed (i.e. quantity of data able to be downloaded or uploaded per second on the connection, in kbps or Mbps etc.). Obviously ~every~ connection to the Internet has some maximum speed it can attain. This maximum is either a hard limitation of the technology being used (e.g. ADSL2+ tops out at 24 Mbps), or an artificial cap imposed by the ISP (a 3 Mbps DSL connection on a line physically capable of faster speeds).

The prevalence of artificial speed caps in a market largely depends on the pricing model. In some countries, ISPs generally distinguish the various plans they offer by their speed - e.g. AT&T has 768 kbps/1.5/3.0/6.0 Mbps speed tiers for their DSL product, with prices increasing as you increase speed. Most cable companies and FiOS also have speed-based tiers. In some other places, plans are usually distinguished instead by the quantity of data you are permitted to transfer in a month (traffic caps or transfer limits). So an ISP will offer plans allowing 30/60/100/200/500/etc. GB per month transfer, with prices increasing as you go, but do not distinguish the plans by speed. The speed you get (regardless of the download limit you choose) will generally be 'as fast as the technology will allow' (for xDSL, this means people with short lines in good condition will get better speed than others).

In some ways you could argue that the two type of caps are comparable (because an artificially capped speed will also, obviously, limit the amount you can download in a month). However few people use their connection in a way that saturates the available bandwidth 24/7, so from the end-user's perspective the two are quite different.

I assume this question is referring to traffic caps, not caps on speed. In which case my situation is as follows (I have homes in the US and Australia so have two quite different situations actually):

USA:

Home connection: Cable (Charter), 30 Mbps downstream/4 Mbps upstream; a 300 GB/month transfer cap (but apparently not enforced unless you exceed it by a large amount on a regular basis, and does not attract additional fees)Mobile connection: LTE, 'fast as the tech will allow'; a 5 GB/month transfer cap (enforced, with extra fees if you exceed it)

Australia:

Home connection: VDSL2 (TransACT), 60 Mbps downstream/15 Mbps upstream; a 200 GB/month transfer cap (enforced, connection will be slowed to 256 kbps once you exceed the cap, however no extra fees are incurred)Mobile connection: 3G/DC-HSDPA (which is sold as '4G in the US, but isn't), 'fast as the tech will allow', 2 GB/month transfer cap (enforced, with extra fees if you exceed it)

I typically only use 80-100 GB per month on my home connection so neither the 300 GB cap on my US plan or the 200 GB cap on my Australian plan worry me. The Australian plan is slightly cheaper than the US one (and twice the speed). Also, if I were a heavy user I would have options in Australia, as the same ISP offers 400 GB and 1 TB plans I could move to. In the US though my cable provider is the only option available and I'm on their top tier plan already. So if I needed more data then I'd just have to hope they didn't enforce the cap.

The Australian mobile plan is obviously slower and with a lower limit than the US plan. But it's WAY cheaper ($20/month vs $70+), and still meets my needs.

I made that comment once a while back, and was corrected by someone who pointed out that "volume per second" is just as valid a measure of bandwidth as "volume per month", which I couldn't really argue with apart from as a tech, it didn't sit right. Monthly allowance sounds much better (or cap, but that term gets misused too, at least by telco's in Australia)

Yeah generally the word 'cap' isn't used by Australian ISPs to refer to the amount you can download in a month. They tend to use "download limit" "download allowance" etc. "Cap" is a word which, as you say, is misused by (mostly) mobile phone companies and refers to an amount of money (e.g. $39 cap plan... which is a horrid misuse of the term as $39 is the minimum you can pay, not the maximum!)

True, but they are distinguishable in that one is an artificial limitation (limiting the amount that can be downloaded in a month when the technology could actually allow for more) whereas one is a limitation of the technology (hardware and software) itself. They are quite different in how they affect usage and traffic patterns on the ISP's network.

Someone on a speed-uncapped but downloads-per-month capped plan might be fine with it because, although they don't need to download much, when they DO want to do

1. DSL for about 10Mbps *if* you live in one of the few parts of Anchorage that supports it, or 3.5Mbps for everyone else. There are still entire blocks of the city that can't get higher than 768kbps through this service. Oh, and it's about $100 a month. No cap though.2. Cable for up to 22Mbps with a 200 GB monthly cap. It's about $115 a month. That's just the internet, and doesn't include actual TV service or anything.

Virgin in the UK have a 300GB/month soft limit. If you hit it they start sending you letters literally begging you to use less bandwidth. They can't drop you or have any kind of hard cap because they want to advertise as being "unlimited". All they do is halve your speed after a certain amount downloaded during peak times (which are most of the day and evening).

I'm not a gamer or p1r4t3 [snicker!] so I'd say I use 10gb of the 150gb I get on USWest/Qwest/CenturyLink/whatever:http://www.centurylink.com/Pages/AboutUs/Legal/InternetServiceManagement/

My issue is this: 1.5gb down is $45 a month, 7gb down is $50 a month, but since I'm using that "price for life" plan grandfathered from Qwest ($25 a month) it does NOT pencil for me to bump up my plan where a new customer would benefit.

For my mobile internet, I use Three, and I have 15gb/mo. Plenty for my usage pattern on the mobile. I can also tether on the work BB but that's a little frowned upon..

At home I have a Magnet DSL connection, with the line rental bundled. It's fiber to the estate I live in, and have 4Mb down/ 1Mb up. It's a grandfathered connection in the current offerings - i.e. not available. I was chatting with the techs in the company as I know a few of them personally, and they don't have any metering in place on that o

assuming you get near-perfect coverage (I do), is easily the best mobile ISP in England at the minute. I use a tethered phone and get 24/7 3G through which I pull down at least 300GB/mo. For that, I pay £15. On top of which, I get 3,000 texts (which I hardly ever use) and 300 call minutes (which I never use). I called Three a couple years ago after the local tower fried itself, they fixed it within 24 hours and while I was on the call I asked them what might cause a tower to fry. They told me it woul

Addendum: if you're considering a high-traffic mobile connection, Three still offer PAYG voice SIMs, those are what you want. Stick it in a phone, tether it to your computer and when you top up, get the All-In-One 15 package.

I had comcast. They had a usage meter and said the limit was 250gig. I used to blow that out of the water every month. Normally 600gigs+ a month.

After my promotion was up I switched to ATT uverse(DSL). They say its also 250gigs a month but they do not have a meter at all. Its slower but I know ive been doing more then 250 a month. The line is saturated when I am at work or sleeping. Its at 50% when I'm home surfing.

Comcrap used to cap my account at 250 gigs. They even put me on probation for 6 months for going over. "Can I pay more money to move more data?" "NO!!!" Morons. I wanted to buy what they had to sell and they wouldn't sell it to me. Morons is too good. Idiots. So I consistently ran up 245-249 gigs per month every month. I'd torrent linux distributions to make sure I hit the mark. Then this note popped up on my account: "Note: Enforcement of the 250GB data consumption threshold is currently suspend

I've seen similar odd choices. My ISP offers a 200/30 plan with I think a 200gb cap. That's just stupid. HOWEVER, they have an optional 10/mo add-on which gives you unlimited. Since I switched to that (with 30/10 internet, I don't need 200 down...), I've been easily topping 400-500gb/mo and they've not said a thing. Couldn't be happier.

I was on Rogers in Canada. I was under some kind of grandfathered-in middle-of-the-road high speed connection capped at 95 GB/month, for a little over $60/month. Just started going over that and getting charged for it, so we switched to TekSavvy (local provider), and it's much faster, the "cap" is 300 GB for under $50/month, and if you go over, it they charge you $0.50 or $0.25/GB over, but then *that* caps out at under $70/month total. Then you're automatically on their unlimited plan. Rogers called us

I run a Tor relay at home with our Verizon FIOS service and so far no throttling or bandwidth capping. The one issue I've run into is my daughter can't access Hulu via our FIOS connection as they have detected that our IP address has been used for Tor. It likely was because I ran as an exit relay for a month or two, but decided to configure as a plain non-exit relay after getting a semi-threatening email from Verizon.

My ISP used to have an actual capped plan. You could elect to go for 500MB of monthly download for $50/month or whatever it was back at the dawn of widespread ADSL availability in Australia, and if you went over that you got charged an additional $something/MB, but it was capped at $100. An actual unlimited plan cost $75/month. (I'm probably way off with those figures as it was a long time ago, but you get the idea)

These days my mobile provider sells me a plan with a ~$70 cap, but instead of the cap referri

Imagine if the power companies decided to cap its users. "Sorry but only 200kw/hr per month. Any higher and we either turn you off or throttle your usage by opening a circuit breaker if you use more than 2kw." People would form lynch mobs. And its no secret that power grids are already taxed in many parts of the US. How about if gas companies told you: you have 1000 cubic feet of gas for this month. its either heat your home or cook or have hot water, you cant have all three. The ISP's can happily cry about how their infrastructure is overloaded by file sharing and Netflix yet do nothing to actually invest in more capacity. They instead pander to the share holders to make sure this quarters profits are up, customer be dammed. Yes people can happily survive without the internet but people could also survive without gas and electric and have done so for thousands of years. We have gotten to a point where the internet is starting to become very important in our lives and one day it may be difficult to live without it.

Just a tidbit about power throttling:Back in high school shop class (I took commercial/residential electrical installation). there was this metal collar that fit onto a meter pan between the pan and meter. It had two 20 amp circuit breakers sticking out of it (the push to reset type). The idea was if someone was on a social assistance program and couldn't afford power, this collar was installed and gave just enough power to run some lights, TV, refrigerator, a fan and *maybe* a single AC unit. This way the person received free subsidized power that they couldn't abuse without modifying any building wiring. If they used too much and tripped the breaker all they needed to do was go to the meter and reset the breaker.

Now that I think about it, I believe the power throttle collar was for people who had their power cut and couldn't afford to have it turned back on yet depended on electric for medical conditions. e.g. if they were diabetic, insulin must be kept refrigerated so it was enough for a refrigerator. Maybe it was for both. I forget.

Luckily for me my ISP, as of mid June, dropped their caps (which were pitiful by modern standards), so I'm now unlimited.It hasn't been long enough for me to assume that's really going to stay that way.

Was on 18/2m cable modem but only had 50 GB usage (and both directions counted). I was supplementing it with an additional 100 GB of usage for an additional $25/month.

I was going to respond and say the exact same thing. Comcast keeps claiming that they have a 250 GB/month cap, but I am going well over this every single month (sometimes double) and I have never once gotten an extra charge or even a notice that I have broken the cap.

I was going to respond and say the exact same thing. Comcast keeps claiming that they have a 250 GB/month cap, but I am going well over this every single month (sometimes double) and I have never once gotten an extra charge or even a notice that I have broken the cap.

You're lucky!

I'm not so sure that my Comcast connection can handle 250 GB/month. I never seem to get the bandwidth I paid for. I miss FIOS:(

I've never had FIOS and I'm not likely to ever get it at this rate. When they announced that there would be FIOS coming to Seattle, it turns out that I live literally 2 blocks outside of one of the areas that they're doing their test in. So, while people 2 blocks away will likely have FIOS access available next year, I might never get it.

I personally blame the duopoly of Comcast and Centurylink for holding it up. But, in Centurylink's defense, they are improving the situation here and I see their trucks all

Every month they send me junk mail announcing how awesome FIOS is, and I should sign up for it. Every few months I check it out only to learn FIOS is not available in my area. This has been going on for years.

A few years ago, Verizon was advertising the future availability of FiOS in Kent, and the ads indicated that we should call in to register our interest. When I called, they refused to record my interest because my address was not in their database. By the time I moved into my house, they were no longer planning to offer FiOS in Kent.

Last month, a pair of CenturyLink reps stopped by my house to tell me that they had recently run fiber to the junction box in front of my house, and that as a result they coul

I've got 3 Mbps DSL, and it's enough to watch TV on occasion and to watch YouTube at high-res. If 15 Mbps isn't enough for you, you must be doing some Really Cool Stuff with that extra bandwidth, and I'd be interested to find out what it is.

Watching multiple TV programs at once isn't something I count as cool... I suppose "Downloading DVD Linux Distros Instantly" is sort of cool, but I don't do that very often. Not getting enough upstream bandwidth from one service or the other is something I can see mak

If 15 Mbps isn't enough for you, you must be doing some Really Cool Stuff with that extra bandwidth, and I'd be interested to find out what it is.Watching multiple TV programs at once isn't something I count as cool...

3Mbps may meet the needs of you and whoever else you live with, but my family needs more than 15Mbps to support our normal internet use. My wife complains enough about long video buffering times as it is; I can't imagine going to slower service.

Get the internet service that suits your needs, just don't pretend that other people's needs should not exceed your own, and don't pretend that they should only exceed your own needs if they're doing something "cool".

my comcast account has a 300gb cap, but i was given 3 grace months to go over without charge, i've only gone over once. i usually use 70-150gb and usually get 28mbps on a 20mbps plan, i'm fairly happy with them

I wonder how many other people interpreted "bandwidth" as a monthly data limit. I suppose the units are technically accurate, but the concept of bandwidth should be like how fast you can get water through a pipe (aka how big the pipe is), not how much you are rationed.

Oh: my bandwidth limits are typically between 50 Gbps and 60 Gbps down and 10 Gbps to 12 Gbps up. Comcast "sells" me 60 Gbps down and 12 Gbps up but it seems to sometimes be network capped rather than policy capped. Often the limit is on the other end of my connection, but I have suspected traffic shaping - particularly with YouTube and Netflix.

I tested speeds on my comcast accounts over the years, and I noticed something hinky.If I use well known speed testers, I get about what comcast says I should.On the other hand, if I use more obscure testers, the speeds are a LOT lower, but are consistent between different tests.

So I tried the more well known tests again, but I obfuscated them so comcast wouldn't know what I was doing.Guess what. The speeds went way down to the same thing the more obscure tests were saying.

That seems to indicate that comcast is actually giving you a much lower speed than advertised, but try to protect themselves from law suits by saying 'up to' on their rates, but will temporarily boost you to what you paid for if they detect you trying to run a test on them. (That's pretty much standard practice for a con man trying to prevent you from learning about the con.)

It's pretty well established that Comcast cheats on speed tests. They have that feature where they boost the first bit of a download to a much higher rate, and that tends to have bandwidth testers showing an unreasonably rosy picture of the situation. I guess that might not technically be cheating, but it's something that people should realize, you need a longer test to determine what you're really getting as the first bit will always be substantially faster.

A great example I have of that on my ISP is that a friend of mine had a large file he wanted to download from his webserver. His transfer was taking forever, so I jokingly suggested that he copy it to a directory called speedtest and download it with HTTP. He does and BAM the file screams down. At the same time with the same file, just with different paths and file names (he just shortened it to save the effort in typing the name), he had the original transfer at 50 KB/s or so and the new one at 2 MB/s! I've done that many times to great success.

If I download something through a "well known reputable source" such as windows updates from Microsoft or games through Steam I will max out my bandwidth at the speeds Comcast advertises. I rarely get full speed through other sources though.

I'm never sure if it is the actual site bottlenecking, just Comcast's connection bottlenecking to that site, or Comcast throttling bandwidth for certain traffic.

I think that may be the reason Comcast and maybe some others have a bandwidth cap they don't enforce. If they started adding charges on your bill, it might prompt you to switch service and as long as they're getting paid and can't get paid more by another customer for the capacity you use, they want to avoid that. If they became constrained because too many users and they then couldn't serve new customers, they'd probably charge you. If the only effect is a degree of slowness sometimes (but never intoler

I'm still running 3 Mbps because I haven't seen a good reason to switch up to 6, even though my wife now has a faster laptop. I can watch TV on it (though watching TV on my actual TV via Tivo and cable works better because they're not breaking the show into little bits and keeping you from skipping over commercials), and I can watch YouTube at high-res, and that's all the media-consumption that I've wanted. Occasionally I want to download Linux distros or something, but I mostly do that at work (where it'

Agreed. People now confuse bandwidth as a data limit. Ironically it has displaced the previous confused interpretation, "the amount of data that can be carried from one point to another in a given time period." Bandwidth, in regards to transmitting data, is the range of frequencies within a given band.

Bandwidth to electronics engineers is the useable range of frequencies.

Bandwidth in computing is simply the rate of transfer of information. Generally the computing people don't need to worry about just how the physical side of communications works. Frames just go in one end of the mysterious cable and come out the other.

Actually you're speaking of the response time. AKA ping. That's how fast you can get the water through.
Bandwidth, is how MUCH water you can get through in the same amount of time.
You request a single bit of data. It takes maybe 50 MS to get to you.
You request 1000 bits of data, if your connection has enough bandwidth, it sends all 1000 bits in 50 MS.
Ping / Response time - How fast the water / river is moving.
Bandwidth - How wide the river is / how much water is moving that fast.

My understanding was that Comcast capped my usage (I have a "Blast Plus" account) at 250GB/month. Seems to reset every month at 0000Z on the first.

I monitor my own usage fairly carefully, I think last month I was a bit over 300GB. But: Comcast announced [comcast.com] that they are temporarily suspending enforcement of their cap - as of May, 2012. They have indicated that they are going to replace the cap with "new approaches", but there doesn't seem to be any mention of this since that date.

There's clearly tension between the cost of the plant necessary to support large users of data and the profit of the corporation. Without diving into that debate, I will relate what I've heard in discussions with a few other technically-oriented customers: they really didn't engineer their network to support any significant level of symmetric usage (it's designed for some multiples of download traffic over upload traffic), and the whole question of traffic shaping was a response to an actual "fear" that their network would be trashed by BitTorrent users.

I don't know whether that's actually true. But I do know that ultimately, all resources on the Internet are shared, and that without sufficient bandwidth there is lots of potential that won't be attained. I have some level of sympathy for the idea that someone may have to be throttled to keep costs for usage roughly equal for all customers of a particular class, or that pricing might have to be "reasonably" adjusted based on usage - especially peak usage (I do offsite vaulting exclusively between 0100 and 0500 local time).

I'd hope that Comcast and the other ISPs realize that the only way they are going to be able to make their business case to their customers if they operate transparently - and I know that's not the initial strategy for any large corporation. I don't think most people have an issue with paying "reasonable" fees - but, again, in the telecomm/service industry in general, that's generally how things are priced.

They are going to have to figure out how to make some profits on what anyone reading this already considers a "utility" - they sure aren't getting revenue from my pageviews of the ads on their home page. However, I've heard too many stories of how Internet connectivity delivered as a pure utility (especially by non-profits such as municipal governments) provides better service, higher bandwidth (sic) and lower costs than investor-owned corporations; if I could vote (if it were practical in my section of Boston) for that, as a public good, it'd make this discussion go away.

I have the opposite situation. Until some time last year, Comcast had a cap of 250GB on my account, but they removed it and simultaneously bumped me up from 12Mbps to roughly 20Mbps. I've had a few more bumps since then, and right now I average 30Mbps, while my plan still says "12Mbps". When I was still subject to the cap I only went over it one time by a couple of GBs, and I never got a nasty letter or email about it; in fact I only knew about it because I checked the usage meter on my account page.

You're lucky not to live in Canada! My ISP (Rogers) was charging me $50/mo for internet service, but there'd be an added $100/mo fee if I went over the cap. (yes, the fee scaled up to $100, but typically hit $100 pretty fast). This was ludicrous.

I've switched to a competitive ISP (Thank goodness they exist) that Rogers techs try to continuously dislodge by disconnecting customers locally, but though the data rate is 1/3 that Rogers provided for the same price, there is no cap. Good.

Other missing option is "Set cap based on how much I pay". They have an actual unlimited plan, if I want, and it is actually unlimited, not "subject to reasonable use". Of course it has a price to match.

Comcast would be much better off encouraging everybody to run BitTorrent so they weren't downloading new material from the outside world as much. It's not like your neighbors weren't all also downloading the latest Breaking Bad episodes...